


Something like Destiny

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dual Timeline, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Second Chances, at least partially
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: “So you thought that we'd see each other again.” It just slips out and she can't even blame it on the alcohol because she's completely sober by now.“Yeah, I always did.”  Fitz thoughtfully taps his fingers against the steering wheel.  “Have you ever just gotten the feeling, with some people, that they're going to be a part of your life for a long, long time? No matter what you do, something's going to keep on pulling you back together.”“It sounds stupid, I know,” he adds, flushing. “I can't really explain it.  But I've always had that feeling about you.  Like there was something shoving me in your direction.  I don't know what it is but...”“I know,” she says.  That sounds like destiny, she doesn't say.
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 11
Kudos: 98





	Something like Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> There is a Quakerider companion piece to this that I am currently writing!

_Tonight_  
It's a warm summer night in late June, the smell of jasmine hanging thick in the air. There's a bright, poppy song playing from Daisy's speakers with the volume turned all the way up and they're drinking cheap sweet wine out of red cups while Bobbi does their makeup and there's a sense of possibility that Jemma Simmons swears she can see hanging in the air. She spins just a little when Bobbi finally lets her get up, the skirt of her floral sundress belling out around her knees, and can't help the laugh that bubbles up out of her.

“I feel like we're in college again,” she says and perches on one of the bar stools. “Except that the wine came in a bottle and not in a box.”

“We're classy now,” Daisy says solemnly. “I spent six whole dollars on this wine.”

“We appreciate your sacrifice,” Bobbi says as she applies highlighter to Daisy's cheekbones. 

“Who's supposed to be at this party anyway?” Jemma asks and takes another sip of wine, letting the sight of her two best friends in the same room wash over her. It's been almost three years since they all graduated and while she and Daisy live together, Bobbi moved out to Colorado for her job and she only comes back into town two or three times a year. Jemma still talks to her almost every day, whether it's over text or video call or commenting on each other's Instagram stories, but it's not quite the same. Bobbi came back to visit three days ago and so far they've had the best Lebanese food in Los Angeles, braved the lines at Disneyland to visit the new Star Wars attraction, gone thrifting at Bobbi's favorite stores, and flirted shamelessly with cute boys at a rooftop bar. (Admittedly, Bobbi did most of the flirting. Jemma stood around and looked awkward.)

“Well, Tony Stark is throwing it so you know he invited absolutely everyone. He's calling it an unofficial class reunion. According to Natasha, he even invited some of the Wakandan exchange students from junior year,” Bobbi says.

Daisy sits up straighter. “You know what this means? We can finally confirm Jemma's theory about T'Challa.”

“I said that he might be a prince in disguise once!” Jemma protests. “I was drunk when I said it.”

“But drunk Jemma is usually right,” Daisy points out. “Drunk Jemma said that I should break up with Grant even before we found out that he was running an illegal snake smuggling ring out of his dorm room.”

Bobbi nods. “Drunk Jemma knows all.”

Jemma just laughs and drains the rest of her wine. Half an hour, two pizza slices, and a bottle of wine split between the three of them later, they're Ubering over to Tony Stark's ridiculous mansion and reminiscing about the time they tried to dye Daisy's hair lavender in the bathroom of their freshman dorm. “Grey hair was a thing for a while,” Daisy says resignedly. “If I'd just done it three years later, I could have been very hip.”

“You're always hip,” Jemma tells her. “You wore all black before it was cool.”

Daisy bursts into laughter, the sound echoing out into the night, and drags them both to the center of the dance floor as soon as they get to the party. Tony Stark has hired a live band, who Jemma thinks had a Top 40 hit song a few years ago; there's three bars, each with an assortment of bowtied bartenders making elaborate drinks; and she's fairly sure that the pool is even larger and more extravagant than it was the last time Tony threw a party. (Jane Foster's insanely gorgeous Australian boyfriend is already splashing around in it shirtless.) There's a dessert bar in one of the living rooms and disco balls hanging from every corner and fifteen minutes after they get there, someone sets off a confetti cannon on the main staircase. It's wild and glittering and Jemma can feel the party sweep her up into its heart as the music reverberates through her bones and she throws her arms up over her head to shimmy with abandon. (She's a terrible dancer but she's never let that stop her.)

Thirty or forty minutes later, she needs another drink. It's when she's waiting at one of the bars, as the bartender performs some kind of dance with the cocktail shaker, that she glances around the room to see who else she knows. And it's like the crowds part and a spotlight shines down like in the climactic prom scenes of the 90's teen movies she secretly adores. Because there's Leo Fitz, as if he's been waiting for her all along.

_Seven years ago_  
Leo Fitz is running late. Technically, this is not his fault. Even if he did tinker slightly with his alarm clock, he didn't change anything essential. (Or at least, he's fairly certain he didn't.) And even if he did theoretically change one of the key functions of his alarm clock, namely the alarm, he had a back-up plan. Unfortunately, Lance Hunter is a man of many talents but being a reliable back-up plan has never been one of them. 

So now he's sprinting across campus, his messenger bag banging into his side with every step, and so out of breath it's embarrassing. He crashes through the doors to his European History lecture exactly two minutes and twenty three seconds after class is due to start and it would have been fine if the only seat left weren't in the very front of the room. So he slinks down the stairs and takes the seat next to a girl who sweeps an assessing glance over him that would make Professor McGonagall proud. 

She has her desk set up perfectly: a notebook aligned to the right hand side, three pens lined up to its left, and an assortment of colored highlighters positioned at the top of her desk. Her notes are in impeccable handwriting and the moment that the professor starts talking again, her pen flies across the page faster than anyone else in the class can type. She even has three tiny containers full of healthy snacks stacked in the desk's top left hand corner and he's willing to bet that her backpack is just as perfectly organized. In contrast, his bag currently contains a circuit board, three granola bars, a Nalgene water bottle, a paperback book with aliens on the cover, three notebooks, and exactly zero writing implements. Which he happens to be in desperate need of, as everyone else is scribbling away and he has the sinking feeling that at least half of this lecture is going to be on the midterm. Maybe he dropped a pen in there by accident last week...he delves into the depths of his bag in despair and tries very hard not to groan out loud as more names and dates flash up on the screen. 

One appears on his desk. Two actually, he realizes, one blue and one black. He turns to say thank you but his neighbor is already bent back down over her notes, a sheet of sleek brown hair hanging between them. 

“Ahh, thanks,” he finally blurts out at the end of class as they're both walking out the door and onto the quad. “For the pen. I normally have some, I swear. But I've been experimenting with my alarm clock and it didn't work this morning and I...Anyway, thanks.”

He trails off, fairly sure that he sounds like a blithering idiot. But she doesn't look away.

“What kind of experiment?” she asks slowly. She's looking at him more carefully now, a spark of interest in her eyes, and it's the kind of look that makes him want to stand up straighter and prove himself worthy of it. 

“I'm trying to make it wake me up gradually by filling the room with more and more light instead of having it just blare at me. It doesn't quite work yet,” he admits. “But I'll get there soon. Just needs a bit more tinkering.”

“Do you have blueprints?” she asks. “Or plans of any kind?”

“Course I do.” Fitz pulls out a wad of sketches from the bottom of his bag, some of them on real drawing paper and some of them just messy notes on dining hall napkins, and starts talking her through all the different features of his alarm clock design. She nods like she really understands what he means. When she starts asking him questions, Fitz realizes that she may understand his design even better than he does. It's a funny feeling—he'd never thought that anyone else could make sense of the maze of things his brain produces on an hourly basis. He thinks he likes it. 

Something chirps from inside her bag and she glances down and grimaces. “I've got to go to class,” she says. “But I—I'd like to hear more about it next week, if you don't mind telling me.”

“Not at all. I'll, er, I'll see you then.”

“You will. Bye!” She smiles at him, quick and bright and a little devastating, and then she's off, deftly maneuvering around the group playing Ultimate Frisbee in the middle of the path.

Fitz is left there awkwardly flapping a hand at her. She's got possibly the best smile he's ever seen and a never-ending supply of pens and an interest in discussing blueprints and he doesn't even know her name. And he has the feeling, more sure than he's ever felt about anything in his life, that they're going to be friends. 

_Tonight_  
She should go say hi to him. There's really nothing stopping her from saying hi to him. Then from across the room, Fitz lifts a hand in a tentative wave at her and all of a sudden, it's like it's freshman year all over again. They're nodding to each other from across a classroom or the grass of the quad or in someone's awful basement, neither of them quite sure which one should say something first and both of them desperately wanting to.

The bartender hands her drink over—it has at least three kinds of alcohol in it and a paper umbrella sticking out of the top—and she drains half of it in one gulp. Properly fortified, she marches across the room and straight over to Fitz. He's waiting for her. Someone else might say he's just hiding out in a corner but she knows (or at least once upon a time, she knew) Leo Fitz and he's waiting for her. 

“Hi,” he says and promptly starts peeling the label off his otherwise untouched beer bottle. He always has to have something to do with his hands, she remembers. At parties, he would end up building the most elaborate sculptures out of red Solo Cups, loose beer cans, and whatever else he could find lying around. One time, he constructed a to-scale replica of the Parthenon that briefly went viral on a campus Facebook group.

“Hi,” she says and they stand there in painful silence. She's never been particularly good at impromptu conversation. When she took an improv class sophomore year, she would stand there stock still until inspiration finally struck and the most absurd things came out of her mouth. One time, her scene partner asked her how her job at the bottle cap plant was going and she recited the opening lines of Richard III. It really is like the beginning of everything all over again, she thinks, when it took them ages to figure out what to say to each other, before they learned each other's rhythms and talked like they were trading lines of the same song back and forth. 

“So are you still in Seattle, then? Someone mentioned that they'd run into you at an alumni event there,” she lies. Fitz doesn't need to know that every four or five months, after she's had an especially disastrous date, she gets out a bottle of wine and goes through his social media with Daisy alongside her to make sure she doesn't accidentally like or comment on anything. 

“Just moved back, actually. I'm consulting on a special project for the next six months and then they want me to hang around the LA office for a while. We're trying to win the design for a new desalination plant and I might end up working on that,” he adds. “You're a teacher now, right?”

“High school history,” she tells him. “Also the debate coach and assistant drama teacher. But I plan on running the entire school district by the time I'm forty-five. At the very latest.”

“Rounded up from thirty five, then. I'm scandalized that you've let your standards get so low, Simmons,” he says. She used to outline her plans to him, complete with visual aids and copious use of yellow highlighter, and she's surprised that he remembers. She has almost everything about him committed to heart but after everything that happened, she's always imagined that he deleted everything nonessential about her from his hard drive. Still—three and a half years ago, Leo Fitz was perhaps the person who knew her best in the world. Maybe in some ways he still is. 

“You know, you're the only one who ever called me that? Like we were a pair of spies in training at a top-secret facility,” she teases. 

“I think we would have made excellent secret agents,” Fitz says. “We could have taken out evil-doers with that tranquilizer rifle I designed junior year. Agents Fitz and Simmons.”

“I tried to convince someone that I worked for the FBI on a date once,” she says, wincing a little at the memory of it. The date hadn't been going anywhere, they were trapped waiting for the main course to come out, and she'd been more than a little tipsy on the wine and an empty stomach...so she'd made up an elaborate backstory for herself and tried to stick to it.

“Did it work?”

“Not at all. I'm a terrible liar,” she says. “He fled before the crème brulee even came out. But he did pay the bill.”

“Have you had better luck since then?” he asks awkwardly. “I've heard that dating in LA is a bit of a nightmare.”

She worries at her bottom lip, hesitates. He's just asking to make conversation, she thinks, but she can't help hoping that he really wants to know. “There's no one at the moment. Are you...”

“Not right now. There's been a few people but no one...” He trails off, shrugging. “No one indelible.”

It hangs in the air between them, years and years of shared history, and Jemma swallows hard. If she looked out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she might even be able to glimpse it, make out the shape of late nights spent together in the library and hours-long conversations at their favorite cafe and that winter evening in her living room where everything fell apart. 

“Fitz,” she says. “We have to talk about it eventually. It might as well be now.”

_Six years ago_  
Leo Fitz is hopelessly, stupidly in love. It's never going to work out—he's calculated the percentages and they're dismally low—but he is anyway and it's driving him to despair. 

“Mate, either ask her out or stop moaning about it,” Lance Hunter says from the couch and aggressively jams the buttons on his controller. “And give me some cover or the aliens'll get us again.”

“The aliens always get us on this level. We need Mack. And I wouldn't even know how to ask her out,” Fitz adds. “She's much too cool for me.”

“Look, just ask Jemma to do some reconnaissance for you. Daisy's her friend,” Hunter says. It's a halfway sensible point. Fitz is concerned that he's at a place in his life where Lance Hunter is making half-sensible points. “She can subtly scope things out. Figure out what your chances might be.”

“Jemma doesn't do subtle,” Fitz points out. It's true. Jemma Simmons is brilliant and loyal and funny and in many ways one of the best friends he's ever had and she couldn't lie convincingly if her life depended upon it.

He pitches forward and groans into the table. On screen, both his and Hunter's characters get killed by aliens. 

He decides to talk to her about it anyway two days later, when they're camped out in the library with a week's worth of homework and her industrial size thermos of tea.

“There's something I've been meaning to ask you about. A favor, really. A truly massive favor.” He winces and the yellow highlighter he's been using seems to squeak extra loudly as he drags it across a page of his environmental engineering notes.

“You like Daisy and you want me to see if you've got a chance with her,” Jemma says primly and continues to insert sticky notes into her copy of Antony and Cleopatra.

“You know?” He gapes at her.

“I have excellent powers of observation. Also, everyone knows,” she adds. 

For the second time in three days, he finds himself groaning into a table. This one is a minor upgrade over Hunter's disgusting coffee table. 

“I don't think she—she sees you as more of a friend. I'm sorry,” Jemma says and there's a tentative pressure on his shoulder. He thinks she's patting it. “It's absolutely nothing to do with you, of course. Sometimes people click and sometimes they don't and it's not—but you're marvelous, all right? Really, really marvelous.” 

“You don't think I'm marvelous, Simmons,” he says jokingly. “Not until I learn to organize my notes properly.

“Of course I do.” She says it like it's the simplest thing in the world and as Fitz looks at her, giving him a sweet sideways smile as she bends back over her work and passes him the container of contraband biscuits, he feels an impossible swell of fondness for her. And he may be hopelessly in love with Daisy Johnson but he thinks that he's never going to feel about anyone the way that he feels about Jemma Simmons. 

_Tonight_  
“I'm sorry,” Fitz says. “I know I said it before but I am. I was stupid and I didn't know what I was doing and I—I should have known what I wanted before I got you all tangled up in it. I never wanted to hurt you and I'm so sorry. I should have told you in person but...”

“I probably wouldn't have let you,” Jemma admits, remembering the voicemails she deleted from her phone without listening to them and the handwritten note he left in her mailbox that she made Daisy open and read for her. “I'm sorry too. I don't think either of us really knew what we were doing.”

And even though she's the one who knew they had to talk about it, all of a sudden she wants to sweep the last three years away with a wave of her hand and let them just be them again. She wants them to eagerly discuss the new Doctor and commiserate over the complete idiots in their respective workplaces who never bother to read their carefully detailed emails all the way to the end and gossip smugly about their friends and laugh at the jokes that everyone else meets with a politely puzzled look. She wants to feel like they speak each other's language again, a secret code that they're the sole two speakers of. And even if she'll never get what she wants most from him, she'll take anything that she can get.

“I'm not sure that I know what I'm doing now,” he says wryly. “I blew up my microwave last week.”

“Well, what were you trying to do to it?”

“Who says that I was trying to do anything to it?”

She just looks at him, raising one eyebrow, and he launches into a detailed explanation of his microwave's failures to reheat pizza properly and when she asks why he doesn't just use the stove or the oven to reheat his pizza, he passionately tells her that “it's the spirit of the thing, Jemma” and then they're looking at design sketches on his phone and debating the merits of the best pizza places in LA and leaping effortlessly from topic to topic, their minds twisting and curling and following each other nearly step for step. Theoretically, Jemma should be mingling. She wants to try to wrangle a donation out of Tony Stark for her school and there's an extremely cute Wakandan former exchange student who Bobbi's been texting her photos of all night. But she's so comfortable in this corner with Fitz and they have so much to talk about and she...she doesn't really want to see anyone else. She's not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

“Want to go out to the pool?” he asks when someone nearly spills their drink down her back. “It should be quieter if we go to the side that's farthest away from the house.”

So they go out to the massive pool, which has inflatable swans and pineapples and donuts floating in it, and stake out a corner at the far end to dangle their feet in the water and talk.

“I forgot!” Fitz says midway through their conversation about a new sci-fi series that he absolutely has to read. “I got a dog. His name is Monkey and Hunter claims he's a menace but once I get him trained properly...”

He pulls out his phone to show her pictures of a medium-size mutt with extremely floppy ears and his tongue hanging out of his mouth, who hides all his squeaky toys in Fitz's shoes and gazes up at Fitz with blind adoration. Fitz buys the dog massive bones to chew on and elaborate costumes for Halloween and generally spoils him rotten, so the adoration is clearly mutual. Jemma remembers Fitz telling her about how much he wanted a pet when he was little and how he and his mum could never afford one and she's suddenly, fiercely grateful that life has decided to grant Leo Fitz at least one of the things he's always wanted. 

“I'm so glad,” Jemma says. “That you have a dog and a job you like and that you...that you're happy.”

She stares down into the pool, feeling a hot flush creep up her neck, one that only intensifies when her ankle accidentally bumps up against his. He's staring into the water even more intently than she is and all she wants is to twist her fingers through his and squeeze tight. 

“That, ah, that means a lot,” Fitz says, stumbling over the words. “I hope you're happy too.”

Mostly, she is. She loves her students and she loves living in her and Daisy's cozy apartment and she loves the sprawling, ridiculous expanse of LA. She loves going to the farmer's market on weekends and stuffing her bags full of produce for culinary experiments that are successful about 75% of the time. She loves going to the beach with Daisy with a stack of paperback books and a cooler full of snacks and going hiking with Jane in Griffith Park on the weekends. She loves seeing her students' productions and cheering them on when they win a debate meet and the feeling that she's doing something that might help them years down the line. But she can't help thinking that her life might be a little happier if he was still in it. 

_Five years ago_  
It's Fitz's turn to be on Jemma breakup duty and he's come prepared. He has a large bottle of cheap wine from Trader Joe's, a pink bakery box full of chocolate peanut butter cookies from the bakery she really likes, and a handwritten list of her favorite Parks and Rec episodes in case the situation reaches a crisis point.

“I don't need babysitting,” she tells him when he arrives at the apartment she shares with Daisy and Bobbi. “I'm perfectly fine.”

Jemma plants herself on the couch and folds her arms across her chest, staring daggers at him. She's wearing perhaps the most casual outfit he's ever seen her in—black leggings that have pieces of fuzz stuck to them, when she normally wields a lint roller with ungodly enthusiasm on her entire wardrobe, and a stretched out t-shirt with a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt on it that she's had ever since her high school class trip to DC.

“Jem, two days ago you tried to steal Bobbi's student ID and break into the chemistry lab to destroy his experiment,” he says as gently as he can. “And I brought cookies.”

“I wasn't going to destroy it. Just a little light sabotage,” she sniffs. She perks up at the mention of cookies though. 

“Well, if it was only going to be light sabotage...I could help with that,” he jokes. “We can throw in some casual arson if you're interested.

She laughs and Fitz feels strangely proud. He can always make her laugh, even when she's spiraling with anxiety about midterms or seething with rage about her most recent mock trial nemesis. (He loves the way her laugh sounds, surprisingly deep and rich, and the dimples that appear in her left cheek when she can't stop giggling.)

“It's not even that I liked him that much,” she says when she's halfway through her second glass of wine. “His head was shaped a bit like a cabbage.”

“So you finally admit it.” Fitz brandishes his glass of wine in triumph. He's only been trying to tell her that since the first time she introduced Milton to their friend group. Cabbage head aside, Fitz never liked Milton in the first place. He always acted like Jemma was lucky to be dating him when it was so clearly the other way around.

“I admit that you were right.” She mock-scowls at him. “But Milton, he—I never felt that he was really interested in listening to what I had to say. I think he liked the concept of me much more than he liked the reality of me. But it was so nice to feel wanted. And now I just feel so stupid.”

She frowns down into her wine. “I hate feeling that way,” she says. “I don't like thinking that I made such a big mistake.”

“But it's not necessarily a mistake, I think. First of all, you learned not to date anyone with a head shaped like a vegetable,” he says, trying to make her laugh again. “But you'll know how to make things better the next time around, right? And you're the least stupid person I know, Jem, no matter what you do or who you date. You're brilliant and capable and loyal and lovely and the next person you date would have to be a blithering idiot not to recognize it.”

“You don't mean that.” At least now she's frowning at him and not into her wine and for some reason Fitz can't help looking back at her. Her eyes are a deep, deep brown and her stare always has a way of stopping him in his tracks, even when it's on the verge of turning into a glare. Even with her hair sticking out every which way and the faint red puffy traces of tears on her cheeks, there's a gravitational pull about her that has him leaning in closer to her orbit. 

“Of course I do,” Fitz says and tries to shake the feeling off. “Right, do you want Parks and Rec, Notting Hill, or The Great British Bake-Off?”

“Parks and Rec, please,” she tells him and leans back into the couch. “Season two--”

“Episode twenty-three, when Chris and Ben show up. I know.” He offers the box full of cookies to her and she takes one, settling back into the couch with a sigh. “So no more sabotage? Light or otherwise?”

“No more sabotage,” she agrees. “But you have to bring ginger cookies too next time.”

He keeps on looking over at her as they watch Leslie Knope valiantly go to battle for the parks department and he tells himself that it's to check on her. 

Jemma only catches him looking at her once. She just looks back.

_Tonight_  
“We should go to that late-night donut place,” Fitz announces out of nowhere. “The one in Santa Monica.”

“You want to go all the way to Santa Monica? Now?”

“You love that place,” he says. “And I think I owe you a donut. I mean, I probably owe you a few other things but I reckon that I can start with a donut?”

He owes her a whole other life. The thought comes from out of nowhere and she knows that it's not fair. Not really. They went into it all without any expectations of each other. It was the most tentative kind of experiment and neither of them should have been surprised when the hypothesis failed. But there's a small, cramped portion of her heart that insists on constructing elaborate alternative lives late at night. In this other life, they have a tiny bungalow somewhere with bougainvillea climbing down its whitewashed walls and they go out for breakfast together on the weekends and he makes elaborate packed lunches for her with sandwiches cut into amusing shapes and notes tucked inside and she braves the Rose Bowl flea market for things he might like. They have overflowing bookshelves and cupboards full of spices for making curries on Friday nights and maybe even a plump cat curled up on the living room rug. They love each other deeply and well and maybe just a little recklessly. And late at night, Jemma Simmons lets herself believe in the multi-verse and dwell in this alternate world, just a little. 

“I came here with Daisy and Bobbi,” she says. “I can't just leave them. But maybe if we come right back? And if we bring back donuts for them as well?”

“We can bring back a whole box of donuts for them.” Fitz looks so hopeful, eager and wide-eyed and excited in spite of himself, and it makes her heart crack open a little bit. 

_Jemma_ , 11:47pm: Sooo Fitz and I were thinking of going to that donut place in Santa Monica....would you mind if I went? I'll be right back! And will return with plentiful donuts. :D

_Bobbi_ , 11:48pm: Wait you're talking to Fitz? Is everything okay?

_Daisy, 11:49pm_ : Wait, is getting donuts a euphemism for something else? Because if it is, I salute your creativity. And if it isn't, I want a chocolate one with sprinkles and an apple fritter. And Robbie would like a glazed donut if they still have one please. (He made me add that please on, btw.)

_Jemma, 11:50pm_ : ...Who's Robbie?

_Bobbi, 11:51pm_ : Daisy met a BOY. 

_Daisy, 11:51 pm_ : Um, he's a man. With very manly arms. 

_Bobbi, 11:53pm_ : How are things going with Fitz? Is everything okay? We can come and rescue you at any time.

_Daisy, 11:53pm_ : And kick his ass.

_Jemma, 11:55pm_ : No, everything's good! We've been having a really good talk. 

_Bobbi, 11:56pm_ : Okay...this ass kicking offer still stands though, just in case. And I want an Oreo donut.

“I have donut requests,” she says and looks up from her phone. “Shall we?”

Fitz practically bounds up from the pool as he leads the way over to where he's parked across from Tony's. His car is much nicer than the one he had in college, a beat-up Toyota that could be counted on to have new and exciting mechanical problems every six months and whose backseat was covered in a thin layer of papers, unopened bags of snacks, and small gears. Now he has a sleek Tesla and miracle of miracles, the backseat is actually clean. (She peeks before she gets inside.)

Sliding into the passenger seat next to him is so familiar. Once Fitz got his car, they used to go for long drives around the city at night, stopping to get ice cream or watch the sun set over the ocean or going all the way to Venice to browse at the bookstore on the boardwalk or try to peek into people's elaborate living rooms by the canals. She almost reaches for the dial to tune it to their favorite radio station before she remembers that this car is a different one. The seat beneath her is sleek leather and there aren't any springs threatening to erupt through the stuffing and poke her at any minute. The air conditioning works all the time instead of when it feels like it. And the man sitting next to her actually has a good haircut and a shirt that flatters his eyes and shows off the new muscle in his forearms. 

“It's your turn to pick the music,” he says. It is, she remembers. They used to alternate who got to pick the music and four years ago, Fitz was in a mopey indie-rock phase. She was planning to retaliate with a truly superb poppy playlist. 

“You remember?”

“Yeah. I had to for the next time I saw you or you would have wreaked vengeance upon me,” he says with a quirk of a smile. “I remember the one time that I forgot, you got to pick for the next three weeks.”

“So you thought that we'd see each other again.” It just slips out and she can't even blame it on the alcohol because she's completely sober by now. 

“Yeah, I always did.” Fitz thoughtfully taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Have you ever just gotten the feeling, with some people, that they're going to be a part of your life for a long, long time? No matter what you do, something's going to keep on pulling you back together.” 

“It sounds stupid, I know,” he adds, flushing. “I can't really explain it. But I've always had that feeling about you. Like there was something shoving me in your direction. I don't know what it is but...”

“I know,” she says. That sounds like destiny, she doesn't say.

_Four years ago_  
Fitz wouldn't say that he's ever been very good at putting words to his feelings. Or at talking about them out loud. Or, in the case of this particular feeling, even admitting that it exists. 

He feels a lot of ways about Jemma Simmons. He's fascinated by her mind and he cares about her heart and sometimes he's annoyed by her stubborn refusal to admit that anyone besides her might be right. He finds himself wanting to see her again five minutes after he's said goodbye to her and he tells her about stupid things that he'd never want to tell anyone else about and he can't stop noticing the way that light gilds the lines of her face or the different shades of brown that her eyes shift through. 

“You should just get it out of your system,” Hunter says from the kitchen in between bites of cereal. “You're at a party, you kiss, maybe you hook up, problem solved.”

“That would only make things worse.” Fitz should really stop asking Hunter for advice. But Mack is spending the night at Elena's and Trip has been locked in the library for the past six hours studying for the LSATs and Daisy will definitely tell Jemma if he asks her. (They're good friends now, once he got over his debilitating crush on her, but he knows that she tells Jemma everything. Even the time that he insisted on keeping the lights on all night and propping a chair under the lock on the front door after they watched too many scary movies.)

“It worked for me and Bobbi,” Hunter insists.

“Aren't you broken up again?”

“Yeah, but we'll get back together.”

And once again, Fitz puts his head down on the table and groans. He really needs to reexamine his choices if he's going to keep ending up like this.

Hunter is right about one thing—they do kiss at a party. They're sitting outside on the porch on one of the last really hot nights of the fall and she's laughing, tipping her head back just a little, and Fitz's heart might beat right out of his chest and he...he just kisses her. And she kisses him back and it's soft and sweet and it might be everything he's ever dreamed of. 

“What kind of kiss was that?” she asks him the next day over coffee in the campus center, her chin stubbornly tipped up. 

“The good kind?” he offers weakly. 

“It was quite a good kiss.” She's looking up at him through her lashes and he recognizes that look. He's seen her use it on guys she thinks are cute or on the few boyfriends that she's brought around to meet all of them. Fitz knows all her moves, he realizes, but he had no idea of what it would feel like to have them used on him. He used to tease her about that look and now he wants her to look at him like that again. 

“I don't regret, if that's what you mean. Not at all.” Underneath the table, he's got his hands locked together so tightly that his knuckles are turning white and he's more nervous than he's ever been in his life and he's not sure why. 

“I don't regret it either. Maybe we could...” she trails off, looking at him hopefully, and just like always, Jemma Simmons is waiting for him to finish her sentence.

“I, ah...do you want to go to the movies? On Friday night?” he blurts out. “We could get dinner beforehand too?”

“Like a date?”

“Only if you wanted it to be. I—I don't expect anything. Whatever you want is good with me,” he adds quickly. 

“Okay,” she says, nodding. “Let's go to the movies.”

They go on three perfect dates. They don't sleep together and they don't make any kind of declarations to each other. They go see a mediocre blockbuster and make jokes about it under their breath to each other the whole way through and have a long, lazy dinner at a sushi place afterward. They spend an afternoon wandering around an art museum and get ice cream because it's ice cream weather year round in Los Angeles. And they eat their way through a new food market and get drinks at a tiny hip cocktail bar afterward. All they ever do is kiss—underneath the lit-up marquee of the movie theater, outside the door to her apartment, with the taste of salted caramel ice cream on their lips, in a dark corner of the bar with his hand cupping her face and her hands messing up his curls. 

It's good kissing but it's something more, he thinks nonsensically late at night, staring up at the ceiling after coming home from his dates with Jemma. Good isn't the right word for it. It's earth-shaking, stratospheric kissing, the kind he didn't know existed. And good isn't the right word for the dates they go on either. They're concentrated bubbles of time, heady and sweetly intense, where it seems like they're the only two people in the world. 

And it terrifies him. So he ends it. 

_Tonight_  
“I was crazy about you,” she says halfway through the new Taylor Swift album. They've been driving through the night with the windows rolled down, talking about nothing on and off, pausing every so often to let the music fill the car. (Fitz would deny it vehemently but she's caught him listening to 1989 on repeat more than once. ) “I was in denial about it for almost a year but I was.”

“I pined,” she adds. “You probably don't remember this but we went to that Star Trek marathon junior year and you wore a costume because I wanted to and had that giant Nalgene of water because the last time we went to a movie marathon I complained about being dehydrated the whole time. I just remember looking over at you and thinking very clearly that this was what I wanted. Then I had this whole idea of what you and me would be like in my head, which I very sensibly told myself reality couldn't possibly live up to. Only then it did and then I…That was why I was so upset when you ended things. It meant much more to me than I was willing to admit it did.”

Fitz draws in a deep breath and then releases it. “I didn't know.”

“I didn't tell you. Didn't want to scare you off,” she admits. 

“Yeah, but I should have known. You were my best friend, Jemma,” he says. “I should have been able to tell that something was different or that something was bothering you. I should have talked to you about it and...”

He frowns out at the highway, bringing one hand up to briefly rub at the back of his neck. He gets knots there whenever he gets stressed, she remembers and fights back the impulse to smooth the worry out of his face. 

“And I should have told you how I felt before we started anything. Or tried to talk about things afterward. And we can't change any of it now.” She was mad about it for a long, long time, the kind of wrenching, consuming anger that she only gets about the things that really matter to her. She drank cheap wine with Bobbi and Daisy and told stories about all the things Fitz had ever done that annoyed her and dumped the books he gave her for the last three Christmases into a cardboard box to be banished to the back of her closet. (She's carried that box with her from apartment to apartment, though—somehow it seems to survive every move.) But the anger slowly ebbed out of her and now she's just sorry that it's been so long. They were young and inexperienced and caught up in something completely unlike anything they'd ever felt before, the force of it knocking them back on their heels. Jemma suspects that something would have gone wrong eventually. Maybe if it had happened later, when they had built something sturdy enough to last, they could have muddled through it. But she's spent enough time with maybes and speculation and other lives, she thinks suddenly. What she wants to cling on to with all her strength is the now and the sense of possibility hanging between them in the California air.

“I'm still sorry. Really, truly, deeply sorry. I want to do better, be a better friend to you.” Fitz's voice wobbles a little on the last few words. “If you'll let me, that is.”

“So you're really going to be staying in LA for a while?” She draws in a careful breath and the hope inside her flares up from where it's been banked for years.

“I have an apartment and everything. Maybe we could get breakfast or something? Go for a walk somewhere or to see a movie at the Arclight?”

“You know,” she says. “There's actually a brunch place that I've wanted to take you to for years. Even though we weren't talking, I'd go there and get the smoked salmon scramble and a homemade pop tart and think that I had to take you there with me the next time I went.”

Fitz's smile at that is like the sun. “So you thought that we'd see each other again too, then.”

“Yes,” she admits. “I think I did.”

_Three and a half years ago_  
The stupidest thing Fitz does isn't ending things with Jemma. It's kissing someone else at a party two weeks later. He's in a basement somewhere and he's drunker than it should be and it's all a haze of swirling lights and thumping bass and the press of people to every side of him. And the girl that he dances with, swaying awkwardly towards each other with red plastic cups clutched to their sides, looks a little bit like Jemma.

Jemma finds out. (Because of course she does.) And she calmly, determinedly doesn't speak to him for the rest of the year. 

He's sure that he deserves it. It's still quite possibly the worst thing that's ever happened to him. 

_Tonight_  
The gods of street parking in Los Angeles smile down on them and they find a space only a block away from the donut place. They walk over side by side, their hands almost touching half a dozen times, the lights of the pier glowing and the faint smell of salt drifting over from where the Pacific laps against the shore a few blocks away. It's late but people are still out, laughing and talking and lining up for late night dessert and coffee, and the night has settled into a lazy, easy rhythm that sweeps them up. There are more conventionally romantic moments, the kind involving candles and rose petals and the complete absence of other people and ocean views that aren't blocked by low-rise buildings. But something about this particular moment feels right. 

Jemma Simmons has long prided herself on her logical and analytical mind. Her heart is somewhat less trustworthy. Where her head works out detailed pro and con lists and calculates consequences, her heart shouts at her to throw herself forward without looking to see what lies beneath her. They almost always disagree. And right now, both of them think she should grab on to Leo Fitz and never let go. 

She stops in the middle of the street and turns to face him. “I want to go out to dinner with you,” she tells him. “Not as friends, but on a proper date. Because I think what we had could have been spectacular and I've never felt anything else like it and what I want more than anything else is to feel that way again.”

“You want to go out to dinner with me?” Fitz's jaw nearly drops to the ground before he collects himself again. It's still hanging a little open and it only makes her feel extremely fond of him. 

“I do.” She really, really does. 

“But I—I was going to get things right this time. I was going to apologize and atone and slowly win you over and send you flowers. I had a whole ten-point plan—you would have been proud, Jem, actually.” He looks like he's about to tell her all about the ten-point plan—and she does want to hear about it eventually—but then he redirects. “I don't feel like I deserve you yet.”

“But it's not about deserving. We could go through the past over and over again, but I don't want to do it. I want to believe you when you say you're sorry.” And she does believe him, she thinks, she sees the marks that the years they spent apart have left on him just as much as on her. “And I want to see what comes next.”

“I've never felt anything else like what I had with you either,” he says and a smile that steals the breath right out of her lungs spreads across his face. 

“So that's a yes? You'll have dinner with me?” She barely resists the urge to bounce up and down on the tips of her toes like she's six years old again. 

“I will. Wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do...I'll be there, Jemma.”

_Two years ago and three hours ago_  
Fitz misses her terribly. He thought it would have gotten better by now but instead it's only gotten worse. 

“You should call her,” Trip says, sensibly. “Apologize and see where it goes from there.”

“She wouldn't pick up the phone if she saw it was me.” Fitz doesn't feel like being sensible. He feels like wallowing and eating as much sesame chicken as one man can safely consume. “I don't know how to fix things with her. I don't know what to say or what to do or if it's been too long.”

“I bet it hasn't been too long. Sure, you can't fix things all at once but I think for some people, there's always time. You and Jemma...” Trip laughs, shakes his head. “It was like you spoke a language no one else could understand.”

Trip is just trying to make him feel better, Fitz knows. Because Trip is a good friend and a good person and an eternal optimist. He'll eat takeout with Fitz even though his diet consists of lean chicken breasts and green smoothies most of the time, he'll go hiking and not mind when Fitz starts huffing and puffing five minutes in, and he'll promise Fitz that he hasn't fucked things up forever when Fitz is pretty sure he has. But strangely enough, the more he talks about it with Trip and the more he puzzles through the way he felt back then, the more he thinks that maybe Trip is right. 

Step one in the plan is to build the kind of life that he can share with someone. He buys real furniture for his apartment and only some of it is from Ikea. He teaches himself how to cook and learns how to make an excellent chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. He starts running in the mornings and cleans his kitchen floors and has a standing Friday night trivia team with Trip and Mack. (He largely carries the team on the basis of his strong scientific and general knowledge but Trip was a history major and Mack knows a surprising amount about geography.) He goes on a few dates, one of which turns into something that lasts for a few months, but he knows now that there's only ever been one person for him. 

Step two is to get a dog. Because he's always wanted one and dogs have a way of making everything better. 

Step three is to be so good at his job that when he puts in a transfer request for the LA office, they'll have no choice but to grant it. He works long hours and pores every over detail and teaches himself how to charm clients. It's the part of the job that he'd been dreading the most when he started, the meetings and ever-shifting demands and, most of all, the talking, but he finds himself slipping into a new version of Leo Fitz, one who knows how to make other people see all the things he imagines inside his head. He's growing up, he realizes with a little shock, and he might be doing all right at it. 

Step four is to practice his apology. He makes Trip listen and his friend has some extremely useful suggestions. He makes Hunter listen too and Hunter's only contribution is to suggest that he incorporate background music. 

Step five (finally find a haircut that suits him) is followed by step six (practice the apology some more) is followed by step seven (finally ask to be put on a project out of LA) is followed by step eight....

He never imagines that he'll run into her before he gets to step ten. But when he sees her from across the room at Tony Stark's party, Fitz suspects that fate has something to do with it. So he waves at her, taking that first step forward, and everything starts all over again. 

_Tonight_  
She kisses him and it's absolutely thrilling. She only has to tilt her face up towards him a little for their lips to touch and then her arms are looped around his neck pulling him closer and his arm goes around her waist and his hand into her hair. It's breathless and rushed at first and then it slows down and it's soft and measured, heat still building undeniably between them. When she finally pulls away, people are clapping and cheering. (It's very possible that they think this is some kind of interactive theater performance.)

“So it's us, then?” Jemma pulls back only a few inches from him and weaves her fingers through his, suddenly nervous. 

“Always has been.” Fitz grins and bends his head down to kiss her again.

When they get back to the party, they have a dozen assorted donuts, a dinner date for Saturday night, and a smile shared between them. Bobbi smirks, Daisy exclaims, and she knows they're both going to cross-examine her about it as soon as they get her alone. Nothing is guaranteed, she knows that. There's still years worth of things for them to untangle and catch up on. They'll fight sometimes, probably about some of those things—she knows that too. But she can't help feeling, more sure than she's ever felt about anything in her life, that something about them is meant to be.


End file.
